Qian Xun Tie

Hello!I am a student at McGill’s Faculty of Education. I like to learn, draw, and teach.

Qian Xun Tie

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

The national literature I grew up with often painted the figure of the teacher as a gardener and a nurturer.

Essay from my old textbook, describing the teacher as an “angel,” a “tree,” the “sea.”

Yet I often think that these metaphors find their backside in a set of others: warden, monitor, police. The school, which Michel Foucault analogizes to a prison, is a space where control is readily asserted over children. The teacher is a key paternal actor in this structure, who rewards them for compliance and punishes them for disobedience (Foucault 228). Discipline, for Foucault, is "a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behavior…Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, 'docile' bodies" (Foucault 135).Such extractive measures, defended and upheld by mythos of protection, have been failed to provide the necessary resources to ensure safety and growth of those who, to different degrees, are barred from civic and political life.I then posit the metaphor of the gardener, of the police, of the seedling, and of the tree as two sides of the same coin. Both uphold the control, measuring, and domination of a child's biological and social progression into the modern human. As Sylvia Wynter shows in her Do Not Call Us Negros: How 'Multicultural' Textbooks Perpetuate Racism, dominant curriculums are founded on national fictions that simultaneously extract from and remove Blackness (Wynter p. 9). Today, Wynter's statement remains relevant as ever, inside and outside the United States.If I had relate an educational philosophy, it would be inspired by critical humanists. In my occupation, I want to try and understand how pedagogies reflect our limited understandings of human existence, which are violently projected onto children, some more than others. My teaching is imperfectly shaped by this understanding.Although, near the end of my degree I am still unsure if there is a proper way to teach, I commit myself to two actions while occupying the teaching profession:The first is to work towards literacy. Through a variety of mediums and approaches, I hope to my best ability provide students with the material resources and conditions to access and critically/compassionately study cultural knowledge and narratives. Literacy takes place in many forms, and I attempt to incorporate a variety of forms in my teaching.The second is to use my own literacy to participate outside the classroom. Wherever I teach, I hope to gain a better understanding of the wider systems that define or impact youth. I believe that this can help me support students in their lives.I am not a fully formed teacher, nor do I really strive to be. I do dream, however, for a sensibility to imagine and to witness untethered and unrecognized forms of growth, in students and myself.WORKS CITED
Foucault, Michel, and Alan Sheridan. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. Vintage, 2012, http://0-lib.myilibrary.com.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk?id=435863.Wynter, Sylvia. "Do not call us Negros: How multicultural textbooks perpetuate racism." (1992).

Qian Xun Tie

LEARNING HISTORY, PATTERN MAKING, AND COMMUNITY THROUGH QUILTINGView Lesson PlanIn a previous lesson, students were learning about piecing shapes together to make images and patterns. In particular, they had observed different elements of nature and pieced them together onto the back of a sea turtle.

As a means to further the student's understanding of pattern making and to situate the practice in the context of art history, I decided to base the next lesson on the theme of quilting. Quilting is a practice that directly incorporates pattern-making by manipulating shapes and textural elements. The lesson's purpose was to introduce students to the rich history behind the quilting/pattern-making tradition and to explore this practice hands-on in light of this knowledge.Quilting is a prevalent artistic practice among many cultures. This lesson focused on the importance of this tradition in Gee's Bend, Alabama.

Susan Goldman Rubin's The Quilts of Gee's Bend was used as an introduction to the lesson. I wanted the students to appreciate how the quilters of Gee's Bend utilized limited materials to make beautiful works of art. Moreover, I wanted the students to understand that the quilts of Gee's Bend were meant to be used by the community. Although the quilts of Gee's Bend are now appreciated within museum walls, works do not have to be exhibited in a museum to qualify as art. Crafts and handiwork, commonly made by women and historically marginalized groups, are frequently not considered to be art. I wanted the students to understand that we can appreciate these works just as kindly as those on museum walls.The Gee's Bend tradition inspired the activity that proceeded. Because of limited resources, we did not use cloth, needles, and thread. Students cut paper into geometric shapes and created their own "quilts" through the creation of patterns. Moreover, because quilt-making is so often a communal activity, I encouraged the students to share their shapes and designs with each other.

“In the rural community of Gee's Bend, Alabama, African American women have been making quilts for generations. Taught by their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, these women use scraps of old overalls, aprons, bleached cornmeal sacks - anything they can find. The mere scraps are then transformed into spectacular works of art, each one displaying a unique pattern with vibrant colors and complex geometric composition. Over the years, the women made quilts to keep their families warm and comfortable, never imagining that someday their work would hang on museum walls.” (Rubin, 2017)

The students made beautiful "quilts" as a community. During this lesson, I did my best to adhere to Competency 1 of the Quebec Education Program and act as a cultural facilitator. I consider this lesson interdisciplinary because of its incorporation of artistic practice, history, and community building. However, I still grapple with whether the understanding that one single lesson can instill within students can be deep enough to impact their future learning. In this way, one lesson does not simply "end" when the students are called by the bell. It is integral to draw connections between classes throughout the journey of a school year.REFERENCESRubin, S. G. (2017). The quilts of gee's bend. Abrams Books for Young Readers.Wallach, A. (2006, October 1). Fabric of Their Lives. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fabric-of-their-lives-132757004/

Qian Xun Tie

I am currently a pre-service teacher and have worked with wonderful students ranging from the elementary to secondary level, in Canada, Hong Kong, and China.Read my Educational Philosophy.

FIELDWORK
Every year in my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to teach in different schools. Below are some reflections and stories:Learning History, Pattern Making, and Community Through Quilting / 1 Dec 2023
Teaching Colonialism in Africa: The Necessity of Ethics / 17 May 2024
Implementing Reading Methods: Applying English Language Arts to History / 17 May 2024
Observations: Gender Discrepancies in the Special Education Environment / 17 May 2024
Trauma-Informed Practices and Care in Risky Writing Activities / 08 Dec 2024
Interdisciplinary Methods of Preparing for Novel Studies / 11 Dec 2024
Sylvia Wynter and the American Fiction: Rethinking Multiculturalism / 12 Dec 2024

TEACHING RESOURCES
Below is an ongoing list of unit/lesson plans I have developed for my classes:SECONDARY ENGLISH
Unit Plan Passing by Nella Larsen Novel Study
Lesson Plan Ibsen, Modern China, and New Historicism
Lesson Plan Phillis Wheatley, Poetry, and the American Canon
Lesson Plan Ecofeminism in Canadian Literature
Lesson Plan Metatheatre and Jackie Sibblies Drury's FairviewARTS AND CULTURE
Lesson Plan Black Art History Lesson on the Quilts of Gee's Bend

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTBelow is an ongoing list of educational literature that inform my teaching practice:Freire, Paulo, et al. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. , Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, 50th anniversary edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.Kitchen, Jennifer. Critical Pedagogy and Active Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108874656.Raja, Masood A. Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature : Worldly Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319760.Soto, Carlos. Critical Pedagogy in Hong Kong : Classroom Stories of Struggle and Hope. Routledge, 2020, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429465215.

Qian Xun Tie

READING
Reading History 2023-24ESSAYS
Phantom Past, Pure Future for The Channel, McGill English Department’s Academic Journal / 13 April 2024
On Lunar New Year for MORSL Stories / 9 Feb 2024RESEARCH PROJECTS
“Am I My Own Foundation? Problematizing and Pluralizing Agency through Fanon and Césaire” at Exeter College / Summer 2024, Supervised by Dr. Jane HiddlestonCREATIVE & ART PUBLICATIONS
Trek for The Veg Literary Magazine Vol 22 / Fall 2023
Doo Wop animation for JoNine Liu / 15 Dec 2022
And Yet the Books Season 2 Flyer Design / 21 Jan 2021

Qian Xun Tie